Crossings

Cross­ings fea­tures stun­ning art and a dynam­ic list book for­mat as well as lyri­cal text burst­ing with vivid verbs and rich lan­guage. For exam­ple, in the intro­duc­tion, Duffield writes, “Around the world, in search of solu­tions, ani­mal lovers come togeth­er. Open­ings their minds and their hearts, they work to find ideas, answers.”

Through­out the book, Duffield deft­ly employs the prepo­si­tions over, under across, and through to link the efforts of peo­ple who have designed and built a vari­ety struc­tures to keep ani­mals safe as they trav­el from one part of their habi­tat to another.

The heart of the book is twelve spreads that use a com­pare-and-con­trast text struc­ture and lay­ered text to high­light a wide range of ani­mals and wildlife cross­ings from all over the world.

The larg­er main text presents the main idea in a sin­gle sen­tence, such as, “Coy­otes creep OVER the rush of Ari­zona motorists below,” and “”Pan­golins teeter-tot­ter toward their bur­rows ACROSS a Sin­ga­pore expressway.”

After read­ing these love­ly, lyri­cal sen­tences, read­ers can enjoy sev­er­al sen­tences of more detailed sec­ondary text set at a small­er size. This for­mat makes the book acces­si­ble to read­ers at var­i­ous grade levels.

Cross­ings is a great addi­tion to class­room and library book col­lec­tions. It sup­ports a vari­ety of Next Gen­er­a­tion Sci­ence Stan­dards per­for­mance expec­ta­tions and works well as a read aloud. It’s also makes a great men­tor text for study­ing craft moves in infor­ma­tion­al writing.